Choosing the Right Light Bulb Color Temperature

For the past few years, the world has been in an LED frenzy. With LED bulbs popping up at Lowe’s or Home Depot for $0.99, it’s easy to get carried away. Who wouldn’t want to save money on energy? While I support the transition to LED lighting, I want to make sure consumers are educated in color temperature.

Color temperature makes almost all the difference in how good the light looks. Have you ever walked into someone’s house and the light almost looks blue? Well those bulbs have an extremely high color temperature. Old school incandescent lights had a yellow – orangey color to them; they had a very low color temperature.

The whole color temperature thing is not complicated, just find out what you like and stick with it. Personally, I like a color temperature between 3,500K – 4,000K. To me, this looks like a white, neutral light and is a great balance between the orange of incandescent and the blue lights I can’t stand. To make it easy, see the chart below: